Big Dog Tsou straightened the shantung silk along the paper pattern which Mrs Stallart had left with him. Mem Stallart had rushed in the night before with the silk. ‘I want my dress day after tomorrow, tailor. Mind, you had better start right away. Leave everything else.’ Big Dog Tsou grinned and said: ‘Can do, Mem, can do.’ And then Mrs Stallart had gone upstairs to see the Commandant’s Mem, and the Commandant’s Mem, later, had come down to Big Dog Tsou’s workroom.

‘Be sure to finish that dress in time,’ said Mem, wagging her finger at Big Dog Tsou. ‘Otherwise, you get no more goodies from me, and back to camp you go,’ and she tried to look severe. Big Dog Tsou showed that he knew it was a joke by hunching his shoulders, looking humble and frightened, but grinning too.

‘O.K., Mem, O.K., Mem. I do, I do.’ Big Dog Tsou had picked up quite a lot of English working as a tailor for the officers’ wives of the town. All the mems needed dresses, but it was such a bore going to Singapore to order or to buy new dresses and, besides, passing the customs from Singapore to Malaya one had to pay tax on new clothes. Of course, the customs clerks were often frightened to search cars, and sitting at the wheel of the car with the boot full of liquor and clothes, one could nearly always get through by saying loud and clear: ‘Nothing to declare!’ But still there was a risk. Mrs Clerkwell, for instance, had been caught the other day with a case of six bottles of whisky which she had not declared. The Malay customs official had insisted on looking through the boot, although Mrs Clerkwell had lost her temper. After that all the ladies of the town became more cautious. They wore their new dresses on their bodies and brought them in only one at a time. They wore their new shoes and dirtied the soles. All very boring and tiresome.